As busy professionals, the added obligation to assist your patients in trying to get their disability insurance benefits can be frustrating and time-consuming. Medical professionals must fill out endless requests for forms and further information to be provided to substantiate entitlement to these benefits.

Disability Insurance Claim Denied For Your Patient

The frustration you feel pales in comparison to your suffering and deserving patients. As health professionals, it is hard to understand why an insurance company does not accept your opinion regarding your patient’s ability to work. For the patient, it is beyond comprehension that the opinion of their doctor, social worker or nurse practitioner appears to be simply ignored or dismissed as “….not providing sufficient evidence to explain why you[r] patient is unable to perform their usual occupational duties.”

A request for more information, where you, as the professional feel that you have already provided everything you can to support your patients’ claim, must leave you wondering what they’re looking for. Would a brief sentence like this make a difference?

“When I indicated that my patient was totally disabled in my previous letter to you, I meant that they are REALLY totally disabled!”

You probably already know that this is not likely to make any difference, at all.

How To Help Your Patients​​

So, how can you help your patients in this situation? Refer them to an experienced disability insurance lawyer, who can advance the matter to the next level and provide the much- needed advocacy to break down the barriers of the disability insurance system. Only then will your patients have any chance of a more level playing field in securing the disability benefits that are justly owing to them.​